Cons:

It's a rare moment of serendipity when a single sentence can encapsulate all of the flaws of a video game; when a snippet of garbled nonsense shines like a blacklight in a grimy hotel bathroom to expose the horror that unfortunate patrons will soon endure. I discovered one such sentence while attempting to create a character after setting up my Final Fantasy XIV account:

"To create characters on your FINAL FANTASY XIV service account, you must possess automatically continuous options."

The split-second of stunned consternation you may have felt as your troglodyte brain attempted to parse that sentence into something grammatically functional sums up the entirety of the FFXIV experience: Extended stretches of confused incredulity, punctuated now and then by bursts of intense anger. And yeah -- I just equated FFXIV with a filthy bathroom.

I can't help but feel that FFXIV is cosmic punishment, meted out by some avenging massively multiplayer online deity for my years of complaining about the state of modern online RPGs. They're too simple, I've whined; too hand-holdy, too easy, too friendly, and too safe. FFXIV is none of these things. It is the definition of obtuse: poorly designed, aggressively underexplained, and shoddy in almost every respect that matters.

Combat is utterly without rhythm, and buggy -- damage from large attacks is displayed on enemy health bars before animations trigger, rendering any attempts at gauging combat flow difficult at best. The overworld of Eorzea is a barren, copy-pasted wasteland, sparsely populated by the usual stupid MMO monster tropes (kill three rats, you say?) and completely lacking in character, outside of the hub cities. This game just doesn't have much to see, and very little worthy of exploration: Eorzea exists to be painstakingly picked apart and subjugated by min/max-minded Wikipedia warriors.

Nothing in FFXIV is intuitive or approachable. Crafting is a chore; starting a quest requires flipping through no less than four menus; even creating parties is an exercise in frustration. But no aspect of the game so aptly demonstrates this runaway absurdity like the "retainer" system. Player-hired retainers replace the banks and auction houses of other, less-broken MMOs. In order to access your retainer after you've gone through the irritating process of purchasing one, you must first find a small, nondescript, bell-like object in the middle of a densely packed room. Once you've located said bell, you must find the proper standing distance to trigger the option to summon your retainer from the main menu. And that's when things start getting stupid.

Nope, they sure can't -- partially because those things don't exist.

Cramming excess junk into your retainer's gaping pouches requires, like everything else in the game, lagging your way through the abysmal interface; just clearing the lint out of your pockets can eat up a solid 10 minutes. After you finish housekeeping, the retainer system ceases to be aggravating, and blossoms into abject idiocy. Rather than including a searchable auction house for player goods, Square opted instead to allow players to spawn their retainers in so-called "Market Wards" -- cramped, difficult-to-locate tunnels, chock-full of merchants that must be individually searched for goods.

As of this writing, I have not managed to muster the patience necessary to weather the tedium of clicking through the hundreds of available retainers to find the items I need. The tedium-absorbing segment of my brain (the MMOygdala) is already strained to breaking, from long hours of grinding rats and Dodos and sheep. Sucks for me, since grinding is about the only thing to do in the Eorzea. Grind levequests (yes, that's how it's spelled), at least until you're shut out -- you can only do eight of these dull kill-this-and-that non-quests every 36 hours. Grind crafting, grind monsters, grind menus, grind patience, and finally, grind the logout button.

This is the part of the review where critics typically express hope for the future of the MMO that they've otherwise viciously panned for the past 600 words. And I see glimmers of goodness here: The horizontal leveling system that allows on-the-fly class switching via weapon swaps is a fantastic idea, and the concept of a player-driven economy (based on complex interactions between the various crafting professions) sounds great on paper. I'm sure that -- given a year of nonstop patching -- FFXIV will probably be out of beta and acceptably functional. But, barring a complete overhaul of the user interface, the combat, the player interaction mechanics, the progress system, and of the layout of the world itself, FFXIV is unlikely to ever be fun.